A beer bubble bar bet

Some sober-minded scientists at Stanford University and the University of Edinburgh have finally confirmed what numerous patrons of bars and pubs have claimed for years to have seen: Yes, when beer is poured into a glass, the bubbles sometimes go down instead of up.

This frothy debate first reached a head in 1999 when Australian researchers created a computer model that suggested it was theoretically possible for beer bubbles to flow downward – a seeming contradiction to the laws of physics.

Richard Zare, a professor in natural sciences at Stanford, and Andrew Alexander, a professor at Edinburgh, were skeptical. "Andy and I wondered if the people had had maybe too much Guinness to drink."

Zare and Alexander set up a camera, capable of taking 750 frames per second, to film beer being poured into a glass. Sure enough, they recorded beer bubbles sinking.

"The answer turned out to be really very simple," said Zare. "It's based on the idea of what goes up has to come down. In this case, the bubbles go up more easily in the center of the beer glass than on the sides because of drag from the walls. As they go up, they raise the beer, and the beer has to spill back, and it does. It runs down the sides of the glass carrying the bubbles – particularly little bubbles – with it, downward."

Drowning in beer, so to speak.

Numbers

62 – Percentage of Americans who say they would prefer a universal health-care system to the current one

21 – Percentage by which health-care spending by a daily smoker exceeds that by a nonsmoker

36 – Percentage by which health-care spending by an obese American exceeds that by an American of normal weight

244 – Number of times a Hummer H2 could be driven around the world on the excess calories Americans consume each year

18, 19 – Rank of Costa Rica and the United States among countries whose citizens live longest

Brain Sweat

What is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters u-n-d?

Verbatim

"There is a theory which states that if anybody discovers exactly what the universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."